FAMOUS SAYINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 8902, 19 September 1889, Page 7

FAMOUS SAYINGS.

[Lippincott's Magazine.) The French is not the only nation which has invented historical speeches. Pitt’s celebrated reply to Walpole, beginning, •* The atrocious crime of being a yonng man,” is well known to have been in reality composed of Dr Johnson, who was not even present when the actual reply wr.s spoken ; and Horne Tooke wrote the speech inscribed on the pedestal of Beckford’s statue at Guildhall purporting to be the reply extemporised by the spirited magistrate to George 111. la America, Judge Taney never said or thought that “ the negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect,” but placed the saying in the mouth of an imaginary opponent whom he proceeded to squelch There is a famous mot constantly attributed to Lincoln when told that Grant was a drunkard-— 1 ' Tell me the brand of whiskey he uses, and I’ll send a barrel to all the other generals.” In reality the speech was invented by Charles G. Halpine (JJ iles O’Reilly) in a burlesque account of an imaginary banquet in New York over which he made Lincoln preside. Count Beugnot was the real author of the famous phrase, “ Nothing is altered in France; there is only one Frenchman more,” which was popularly attributed to the Comte d’Artois, afterwards Charles X. Charles, in February, 1824, had been called upon for an address to allay any fear that the Restoration meant a return to the ideas of the old regime. He extemporised a few confused sentences, and was as much surprised as anyone at reading a neat little speech, comprising these words, in the Moniteur. “ But I never said it!” he exclaimed. He was told there was an imperative necessity for his having said it, and it became history. The popularity gained by the mot drew down numerous parodies. The arrival of the first giraffe in Paris was celebrated by a medal bearing the words, “ Nothing ia changed; there is only one animal [beic] more.” The word bete means a foci us well as an animal, and the hreneb phrase has a punning hit at the Bourbons which is lost in English. When Francis I, Emperor ot Austria, died in 1835, and Prince MeUernich, etill remaining at the head of affairs, earned on his former policy, it was raid, “ Nothing is altered; there ia only one Austrian less.” When Talleyrand was appointed ViceGrand Elector of the Empire, Fouchet said, “ Among so many offices, it will not count; it is only one vice more.” Talleyrand was continually having credited to him the good things said of other people. He was often much astonished by these compliments to his genius, bub if he liked the saying he assumed its responsibility without hesitation. His paternity of the famous “ lb is the beginning of the end ” is doubted by Fournier. The still more famous “ Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts ” was assigned to Talleyrand in the “ Nain Jaune” by Harel, who in this case was not only a forger but a thief, because, as the author of a eulogy on Voltaire, he must have known that the latter wrote “Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts,” and that, indeed, the phrase can be traced as far back as Cato. Talleyrand was even so fortunate as to be credited with the good things said at his expense. Thus, “ Who would not adore him, he is so vicious ? ” was said by Montrond of him, not by him of Montrond. Again, it vh not he who, to the sick man com-

plaining that he suffered the tortures the damned, curtly exclaimed, " Deja!” Louis Blanc says that when Talleyrand was on his death-bed Louis Philippe asked him if he suffered, " Yes, like the damned,” Louis Philippe murmured, " Deja! ” a word that the dying man heard, and which he revenged forthwith by giving to one of the persons about him secret and terrible indications. But in fact the repartee may be found in one of Lebrun’s Epigrams, and has been attributed to a number of people. “ History repeats itself,” is a common saying, but unfortunately historians are often a little too hasty in assuming that the repetition indicates falsity. We might believe that William Tell had shot the apple off his son's head, in spite of the fact that many archers before his time had performed the same feat, if there were any evidence that William Tell ever existed. Columbus showed the Spanish courtiers how to make an egg stand upon end, although before his time Brunelleschi had adopted the same method of embarrassing the enemies who sarcastically inquired the method by which he proposed to build the dome in Florence. Nor need there be any question of plagiarism here. When Louis XII. said, “ The King of France does not avenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans,” he may have been entirely ignorant that he had been anticipated by Philip, Count of Bresse, who said, when he became Duke of Savoy in 1497, “It would be shameful, as duke, to avenge the injuries of the Count.” Christina of Sweden may have said of Louis XIV. when he revoked the Edict of Nantes, “He has cut off his left arm with the right,” in spite of the fact that Valentinian had made use of the same expression. In fact, we are all in danger of becoming too sceptical. Walpole wrote an ingenious work to show, taking for his base the conflicting statements in history, that no such person as Eichard 111. ever existed, or that, if he did, he could have been neither a tyrant nor a hunchback. Whately’s “ Historic Doubts Kelative to Napoleon Bonaparte,” which was published in 1810, created wide-spread amusement by its amazing cleverness. It proved with infinite ingenuity that Napoleon had never existed, and was written to expose Hume’s axiom concerning testimony by a reductio ad absurdum. About ten years after the appearance of Whately’s pamphlet, one J. B. Peres, who probably never heard of Whately, published his “ Comme quoi Napoleon n’a jamais exists,” which resolved Napoleon into a solar myth. And it will be remembered that in his ingenious paper on the great Gladstone myth, Mr Andrew Lang has followed in the wake of Peres and proved conclusively that Gladstone is only another name for the sun, and that the various deeds attributed to him are simply allegorical embodiments of the sun’s doings.